Tony Stewart pleased with initial Indy outing as NASCAR Sprint Cup team owner
Tony Stewart and his Stewart-Haas Racing team finished third in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Allstate 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. // Mike Laczynski, NASCAR Scene
INDIANAPOLIS - Tony Stewart was clearly pleased with his performance in his first race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as a NASCAR Sprint Cup owner/driver.
Stewart finished third in Sunday's Allstate 400 and holds a 192-point lead over Hendrick Motorsports' Jimmie Johnson in the series standings. Although he only led two laps, he really couldn't find much to question in his effort.
"[I'm] pretty satisfied with it," said Stewart, won won at Indy in 2005 and 2007. "Obviously you want to win here at Indy. You do every week. But we had a solid starting position, a good pit selection on pit road. We had one little hiccup in the pits. We got to the top three or four there pretty early. That was kind of our spot. We had one stop that got us back to seventh or eighth. We were able to get two of those spots pretty quick. It took the rest of the race to get the rest of the way up there. We just never really could mount a charge to [runnerup] Mark [Martin] or Juan [Pablo Montoya]. Obviously, Juan was in a league of his own most of the day. Mark was really, really good on long runs.
"We just seemed at the halfway point … we got to where we were a little bit too tight in the center of the corner, never could quite adjust out of it, get it freed up there. Seemed like we either made the exit free back to the gas or else we made the entry and the exit free trying to help it turn the center. But we never could get the center right without messing the entry and exit up. To finish third, I'm pretty satisfied with that."
Montoya led 116 of the race's first 124 laps, but was tagged with a pit-road speeding penalty on his final stop. He settled for an 11th-place finish. Did Stewart think Montoya would have held on for the win if not for the penalty?
"I firmly believe if that didn't happen, we were all going to have a hard time with him, for sure," he said. "He never really was challenged all day. He could get out front there. When we got to traffic, it would slow him down a little bit. Seemed like it slowed all of us down when we got to traffic like that.
"He did a great job today. I know what he's feeling like. It's got to make him sick inside. To be able to accomplish what he would have accomplished today, just a remarkable feat. And he had the car and he had the talent to do it today. He just made a mistake and it cost him."
With such a lead in the points standings, Stewart could be gambling more to get wins in these final races before the Chase For The Sprint Cup field is set. Stewart has two wins compared to four for Martin and three for Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch, who actually fell out of the top 12 with his struggles Sunday. A win equates to 10 bonus points when the field is reset prior to the Chase.
Sunday, though, that didn't seem to matter. The Indiana native wasn't thinking bonus points. Instead, he was focused on enjoying a strong day at the 2.5-mile track.
"We ran third at the Brickyard 400," Stewart said. "There's no shame in that. Forty-three cars and we ran third today. To come here with a new package, a new crew chief, to run third our first time here together, I think that's a lot to be proud of.
"Of course, yeah, perfect world, we all want to get those extra 10 bonus points. At the same time, you’ve still got to be consistent each week. You don't have to win a race in the Chase to win the championship. You could sit there and run third or fourth every week and have a realistic shot easily to win the championship. To go out there and be consistent – we ran fourth at Chicago, we come here and run third – we're doing the things that we need to do. It didn't get us those 10 bonus points, but it may not come down to those 10 points at the end of the year."
